Fantasy auto-battler Tales & Tactics is more complicated than it needs to be, but still a reasonably fun time

As someone whose auto-battler experience has, up until now, only been limited to minor forays into the excellent Alice0-recommended Super Auto Pets, sitting down to play a run of Tales & Tactics was somewhat overwhelming. Recently launched into early access and made by the same team behind Slay The Spire's popular Downfall mod, this is a fantasy autobattler cloaked in the skin of a roguelike. That means that in addition to creating an army of tabletop-esque miniatures to do your automatic bidding on a grid-based board, you'll also be picking from randomly generated opponents on a lightly branching story map as you sword chop your way to your ultimate goal: The Grand Tournament.

It's an intriguing combo, but as a relative newcomer to the auto-battling genre, there's maybe a bit too much going on here for its own good. That's not to say I haven't had a good time with it so far, but there are so many things to juggle in my brain that I feel like I'm fumbling my way through it by chance rather than making confident and informed tactical choices.

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The popular Be Quiet! Pure Base 500DX PC case is down to $99 at Amazon, a historic low

Be Quiet's top-rated PC case, the Pure Base 500DX, is down to $99.90 at Amazon USA today following a $15 drop. This is the best price that this mid tower case has ever reached, and a great deal for a case that includes a mesh front, glass side panel, three Pure Wings 2 fans and RGB lighting.

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This Vampire Survivors-like has catgirls, is brilliant, and costs nothing

I don't know anything about VTubers, aside from the fact they're virtual… YouTubers...? What I do know, is there's a Vampire Survivors-like called HoloCure: Save The Fans that's entirely fan made, entirely free, and revolves around Hololive, a VTuber agency replete with catgirls. I am taken aback by how good it is.

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Stanisław Lem adaptation The Invincible is out in November

Calling a spaceship The Invincible might seem like an initially hopeful idea, but boy oh boy, does it open the door to some ironic and probably deadly occurrences. We’ll see just how lucky the ship is when The Invincible comes out on its newly-revealed release date, November 6th, though some readers may know how this story ends already, since it's based on Stanisław Lem’s 1964 science fiction novel of the same name.

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Have You Played... Firewatch?

When listing off my favourite games, I'm shamefully likely to neglect to mention Firewatch. This is probably because Firewatch isn't a game that had some huge formative impact on me, or reframed my entire relationship with gaming, or became an enduring obsession of my hyperfixation-prone brain. Firewatch is, quite simply, a very lovely game, and one that I happily revisit on a fairly regular basis.

I think the main draw of Firewatch, for me, is the forest. I am one of those people who's often happiest on a day-long hike into the middle of nowhere; and when life doesn't provide me with the opportunity to do something as often as I'd like, I'll turn to thematically appropriate video games to tide me over.

Don't get me wrong: Firewatch's central story of Henry and Delilah is a good one, and the marvellous Cissy Jones deservedly picked up a BAFTA for her performance as the latter. But the free-roam mode is, to my mind, just as important for ensuring Firewatch's enduring appeal.

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Relax everyone, Paralives lets you kill your Parafolk just like The Sims

The Sims 4 has long dominated the life simulation arena, but a pair of hopeful rivals are soon stepping into the ring to challenge the undisputed champ. Life By You and Paralives both have grand plans to unseat (or at least share it with) EA’s life sim juggernaut, and they both promise to set themselves apart with features that Simmers have long been asking for. But I only have one question for both of them: can I kill my Sims? Or Parafolk? Or… Lifers? In the case of Paralives, the answer is thankfully a big fat yes.

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Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out review: a fascinating story-generator with a wealth of possibilities

It's hard to know where to start with Six Ages 2 Colon Lights Going Out. The initial uncertainty and esoteric nature of its world has always been the series' biggest problem, as it appears to demand a lot of foreknowledge to play. But rather than memorising facts and (ugh) "lore", it's a series that encourages a different mindset to pretty much any other game. These games are about culture and myth, and how both interact and change over time.

It's harder, though, to write about this entry without just repeating myself. It is a Part Two of a planned three, thus much the same as before, yet different in some interesting, but esoteric ways. Do I try to convince the unfamiliar, detail those differences for fans, or try to cover both and succeed in neither?

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